4.3.4 Discretion under Article 12(4) RPBA 2020
In T 1421/20 (ex parte) auxiliary requests 0a, 0b, 0c, which were filed with the statement of grounds of appeal, had not been part of the proceedings before the examining division. The board considered them to be amendments to the appellant's (applicant's) case, which could be admitted into the proceedings at the board's discretion (Art. 12(2) and (4) RPBA 2020). The appellant explained that the amendments carried out in these requests were in response to the objection of lack of clarity in the impugned decision, the feature considered to be unclear having been deleted from the claim. The board, however, considered that the auxiliary requests contained a different unclear feature which had been objected to already by the examining division. Hence, the board came to the conclusion that, although the amendments carried out in these auxiliary requests might address the objections raised by the examining division in the decision under appeal, they introduced new issues of clarity that led to new objections. These requests were not admitted into the proceedings.